New from Cambridge University Press!

Edited By Keith Allan and Kasia M. Jaszczolt

This book "fills the unquestionable need for a comprehensive and up-to-date handbook on the fast-developing field of pragmatics" and "includes contributions from many of the principal figures in a wide variety of fields of pragmatic research as well as some up-and-coming pragmatists."

Book Information

Naman, the subject of this linguistic description, is a moribund languagethat is spoken on the island of Malakula in the Republic of Vanuatu .Vanuatu is located in the southwest Pacific to the west of Fiji and to theeast of northern Queensland (Map 1). Before it gained its independence fromjoint colonial control by France and the United Kingdom in 1980, it wasknown in English as the New Hebrides and in French as les Nouvelles-Hébrides.

Terry Crowley submitted the manuscript of this book to Pacific Linguisticsjust a few weeks before his sudden and untimely death in January 2005.Terry had been visiting the island of Malakula in Vanuatu since the end of1999, and had undertaken studies of four languages spoken there: Naman,Tape and Nese, which are all moribund languages, and Avava, still activelyspoken. Descriptions of all four were well advanced at the time of hisdeath, though this one was the only one to have been actually submitted forpublication.